For the first ten days, Nadina waited for the beard to end by itself. Emir had stopped shaving on holiday, so it seemed reasonable to assume the new decision would disappear with the sandals. Yet on the final Sunday he bought a small comb. He stood before the mirror carefully drawing its teeth through the still uneven hair. Nadina watched from the bathroom doorway, surprised by the tenderness he devoted to something she considered a temporary lapse.
Back from holiday, their friends immediately praised him. They said he looked more serious, younger, more interesting, sometimes all three in a single sentence. Nadina did not know where to put her quite different opinion. She loved his familiar jawline and the small hollow in his chin. Now she had to imagine them. When he asked whether she liked it, she said she was still adjusting. Emir heard a promise that she would soon begin.
One evening she moved her face away when he kissed her. She did not mean to hurt him; the hair had scratched beneath her nose. Emir withdrew farther than necessary. "I can shave if it bothers you that much," he said. Resentment made the offer sound like a future debt. Nadina sat on the bed's edge. She said she missed his old face but did not want to issue permits for a new one.
He asked whether she found him less attractive. An immediate no would have been comfortable. Instead she admitted attraction confused her, because she loved the man yet noticed the change. Emir turned the comb between his fingers for a long time. He had grown the beard because he liked himself that way, for the first time after months of seeing only a tired man at the working day's end. He did not want to become somebody else. He wanted to stop viewing himself as finished.
Nadina asked him to show her how he arranged his moustache. He exaggerated his serious expression, and both laughed. The conversation ended without an agreed length or a deadline for her enthusiasm. Later she kissed him more slowly, moving her head until they found a comfortable position. They discovered nothing revolutionary. Two people who thought they knew every movement had needed to pay attention to one entirely ordinary kiss.
The beard remained. Some days Nadina loved it, others barely noticed, and occasionally she still wished for the old appearance. One morning Emir extracted a toast crumb from it and unsuccessfully tried preserving his dignity. She wiped his cheek with her thumb. The movement was neither new nor old. It belonged to her, directed toward him. When he offered to buy breakfast, she pulled him close again before he left.